Bicycle Storage for Dummies

bicycle hydraulic disc brake

It should come as no surprise that the biggest problem we've noticed with freelancers answering random questions (the good old eHow model) is that too many times the person answering the question knows no more about the topic than the person answering it. Our house bike guru caught one of these just recently: self-styled fitness professional Elle Di Jensen, who we often find writing about bicycles, tried to answer the question "Is it Bad to Hang a Bicycle by Its Wheel?"¹ for, of all places, Leaf Group's TheBump.com (bicycle "advice" on a pregnancy website???)

Di Jensen (just plain Jensen? or is it really L. D. Jensen, author of Women are From Earth, Men are from Uranus? We can't figure it out...) apparently knew little – if anything – more about bicycles than the OQ. In fact, she may have known even less: the correct answer to that question is, "It depends"! According to an expert speaking at "Bicycling" magazine,

"...if you’re running Shimano XT, SRAM Guide, or another type of hydraulic brakes, avoid storing your bike upside down in your garage. When upside down, air goes to the caliper, and you get squishy brakes until the air goes back to the top in the reservoir—something that will often require a brake bleed to correct. " Jensen's answer, however, is simply, "Hang your bikes by their wheels to store them out of the way without damaging them." That is, of course, the sort of answer you might get from the kid staffing the WalMart sporting goods department or the crusty old geezer in a Home Depot storage section – very likely neither particularly well-informed about cycling and cycles. Heck, they've probably never heard of hydraulic brakes on bikes – much like Jensen.

In reality, 9 times out of a ten, hanging a bike by its rear wheel or by both wheels is perfectly fine; if 1) you're strong enough to lift the bike into place safely and 2) you're careful not to bang the spokes on the hook(s). Hanging a bike by the front wheel alone tends to be nearly impossible...

But that 10th time? You're in for problems. That, dear reader, is why you don't ask people who know as little as you do (or perhaps less) questions like this; and why people like Elle Di Jensen collect Dumbass of the Day awards for pretending to know enough to answer them.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   living.thebump.com/bad-hang-bicycle-its-wheel-9906.html

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